


must come down

by eugyne (AreteNike)



Series: The Law of Gravity [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Altean Lance (Voltron), Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Growing Up, Time Travel, keith and lance are brothers au, their parents are basically qpps, well both are half alien at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-21 18:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12462981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreteNike/pseuds/eugyne
Summary: All Mirana Espinosa has left is her infant son and the memories of other times.(This series can be read in any order.)





	must come down

**Author's Note:**

> the fics in this series can be read in any order, but you do kinda need to read them all to get the full story. hope you enjoy! <3

Mirana Espinosa stumbles ashore with her son in her arms and knows that even with the wreckage bobbing in the ocean behind her she will never be believed.

"I'm sorry," Alfor had said, leading her to the pod. "But we always knew we would have to part."

"I know," she'd said. "But that doesn't mean I have to like it."

He'd laughed and kissed her, her alien prince. He'd ruffled Lance's hair. "I wish you well--and Lance, too. Goodbye, Mirana." 

Then he'd closed the pod and sent it on its preprogrammed way, through space and time until she'd crashed here.

She knows she will never be believed.

She tells her family anyway. They laugh and brush it off, shout instead about how excited they are she's finally "returned" and how happy they are she's okay--why didn't she call?

"No cell reception in space," she says flatly.

So they change the subject and gush over her son--what bright blue eyes! What a beautiful smile! And how old is he?

"Almost six months now, I think," she says. "It's hard to keep track when you're not on Earth."

Someone tells her, in a flat, knowing way, that there was a UFO crash in Arizona. The implication is that she's making it up--like she's the sort to jump on a craze like that. Word gets out anyway; there's bits and pieces of alien ship in the water off a popular tourist spot and people saw her coming out of the ocean with Lance. 

No one seems to like her answers. Her family tires of her commitment to the truth; she tires of seeing her own face on late night TV. Even the conspiracy sorts, that take endless notes and ask for samples and surreptitiously try to scan her with their makeshift gadgets, seem disappointed somehow. She keeps Lance away from them.

If she cannot live among the stars, then at least she can raise her son right. 

When Lance turns one year old, according to the birthday she picked for him--her best estimate--she throws him a party with the whole family present. That night she packs up without telling anyone and leaves home for Arizona.

A desert is the furthest thing she can think of from the ocean she crashed in; besides, it might occur to someone to look for her there, should anyone actually care to. After all, a UFO crashed there.

Arizona is the brownest place she's ever been but she doesn't mind the heat--at least when it's hot it doesn't feel like she's trying to breathe water. She finds a night job at a convenience store where the manager doesn't mind if Lance sleeps on the couch in the back room. It's not busy overnight, anyway.

It's dangerous--there are only so many stores around to rob--but she can't find better, yet.

She finds that the people here assume her slight accent is Mexican instead of Cuban, too, but at least they don't ask her about aliens, usually. One does when she takes Lance to the park in an attempt to see the color green again.

"Hey," the man says. "You look familiar."

Even from feet away he reeks of whisky. She puts herself between him and her son.

"You're probably thinking of someone else," she says stiffly, and tries to leave--the grass is more yellow than green, anyway. He follows.

"No, no, I figured it out. You're that chick, with the aliens. Heard about you."

And just like that she has no patience left for him. "Fuck off," she tells him.

"Nah, tell me. Tell me abou' the aliens." He lurches in, grinning, and she's debating whether she ought to grab the mace in her purse or just punch him and run when there's a shout from across the park.

"Hey! She tol' ya to fuck off!"

The man steps away; they both look. The shouter is a man with a little boy not quite Lance's age clinging to his leg--a little rough looking, scruffy and ragged. Mirana's harasser flips him off and leaves; the newcomer picks up the boy and comes closer.

"Y'alright?" he asks. He's even rougher up close, unshaven and with a scar through one eyebrow, but his eyes are soft. His son watches quietly. She looks away to adjust Lance's shirt; it's ridden up thanks to the stroller's belt again.

"I'm fine."

"...What was that guy on about? Aliens?" 

Great, here's another one. She looks up to glare at him.

"What, you don't recognize me? The crazy lady from Florida that blamed her kid on aliens?" She gestures to Lance. "It was all  _ over _ the news after the crash."

The man's eyebrows raise, more  _ worried _ than amused, and he says, "Didja hear about the crash out in the desert here, just before?"

One of those UFO enthusiasts, then--maybe. "Yeah, what about it."

But he nods down to the boy in his arms and blurts, "That was his mother."

It takes a second to register. His mother. The crash. Alien--that little boy is half alien, just like Lance.

This man knows. This man  _ believes. _

"I see," she says, slowly. She is not going to let go of this man. "Let’s talk?"

His name is Mark--he introduces himself when they introduce their sons to the sandbox. His is named Keith and he is indeed part alien.

"She came down from the sky," he says. They've taken over the swings while the boys play, since there's no one else around today. His grip is white-knuckled around the plastic-coated chains. "Just showed up one night like a falling star and knocked on my door. Tol' me she came in peace, just like a movie. I thought she was wearin' a costume." He snorts without really sounding amused. "She wasn't."

Mirana hadn't doubted for a second that Alfor was an alien. She'd wanted that.

"She had to leave, often," he adds. "But she always came back, until the crash."

There's nothing she can say that won't sound hollow; she's never been good at sympathy. She tells him about Alfor instead. The boys play together in the sand like the best of friends.

"We should do this again," she says when it's time to part, and they do.

By the time a month has passed they're taking turns watching each other's sons; her during the day while he works, him at night while she works. She had worried about letting Lance out of her sight but Mark is a gentle man, a good man, and he  _ knows. _ She wouldn't trust him if he didn't  _ know. _

Nothing brings people together like having the rest of the world against you.

It's convenient to live together--for the boys' sake but for money's sake as well--so they do, six months later. It's the third floor of a three-family but she's used to the noise, to sharing a small space with too many people. She has her own room and that's enough.

Nor do the boys mind sharing, though at one and a half years--give or take a few months--she's not sure how much they  _ could _ mind. They seem to enjoy each other's company, for what it's worth; they babble at each other all day, some real words but mostly gibberish. At least, Lance babbles all day. Keith is quieter--reserved, if she can apply the term to a toddler, like his father.

She's glad she didn't stay in Florida.

Of course Keith learns who she is from Lance, so when he wants something he takes to toddling up to her and saying, insistently, "Mama!" And it's not that she minds that particularly, just the implications for her and Mark.

She's over Alfor--it’s not hard to be, she had always been less interested in him than what he could offer her--but she's not too keen on starting a new romance either. She's never been too keen on romance.

"We don't hafta love each other," Mark says when she tells him so, over a couple of beers and a radio that barely works. "I hope you don't mind if I think of y'all as family, though."

"No," she says. "I do, too."

They get married at town hall, though, and adopt each other's sons--back up the arrangement they already have with the power of the law. The boys head off to preschool officially brothers for all that they share no blood between them.

They call themselves twins once they're old enough to know the word. Lance is three months older but it's close enough.

Mirana leaves the convenience store and finds work as a secretary, which pays better and has benefits--better yet, she can work from their (new, larger, single-family) home most days, which is good because Mark can't always get back from the garage in time to pick up the boys from school. She's the one to hear their troubles, to help with homework, to get calls from the principal when Keith gets in a fight.

She wonders if Keith's mother was a fighter too (but Mark had said she was a spy), or if he picked it up from her somehow. If Lance is protective and gentle like Mark  _ because _ of Mark or if those were traits Alfor hadn't yet grown into but passed along anyway.

They don't talk about that, though, not to each other and certainly not in front of the boys. They can't undo the fact that both boys are not entirely of this world but they can pretend--they can give them a normal life.

And she sees them working on homework together, hanging out with friends together, and she is so proud of that. Of them.

"We may not all be connected by blood," she tells them, "but it doesn't make us any less of a family."

When Lance and Keith start high school both discover a love of astronomy--of the sky, the stars. She sits Mark down one afternoon when they're both out.

"Something in them knows," she says, "even though we've never told them."

"I don't wanna encourage that," he says. She knows he doesn't even like to look up.

"They're good boys, Mark," she says, soft. "They'll always come home to us. You know that."

"...I know."

"So let them get a little closer to the stars."

The argument becomes a shouting match, but she has never been afraid to fight for what she wants, and Mark only wants peace.

So, a month and a half after Lance turns fifteen and the same before Keith will--for fairness' sake--she sends them to flight school. She does worry too, sending her sons up there, but they come home safe and as happy as she's ever seen them.

"I guess I'd better resign myself now," sighs Mark.

"They've found something they love," she says, watching them tussle and laugh together at the kitchen table. "I wouldn't take that from them. I know you wouldn't either."

"You're right, as always."

She doesn't expect them to enroll at the Garrison to be pilots, when they graduate, but she isn't surprised, either.

"I want to see what's out there," explains Keith, still in his cap and gown. He was valedictorian but Lance had written his speech for him.

"Me too," says Lance, before he's whisked away by his friends.

The house is too quiet and too empty when they leave but at least Lance calls regularly. Keith calls less regularly but he's sometimes there in the background when Lance does, and then all four of them are on the phone at once, Mirana and Lance carrying the bulk of the conversation while Mark and Keith get a word in edgewise here and there.

She hears Lance complain that Keith is being antisocial, is stealing his thunder; she hears Keith complain that he befriended Shiro on his own and why won't Lance let him have someone to himself for once?

She hears Lance gush about his roommate--the nicest guy, and he loves cooking! She hears Keith report with a pride he can't hide about the records he's beaten in the simulator.

She hears when the Kerberos mission launches from Keith, but she hears when it goes missing from the radio in the office.

"Check on your brother," she texts Lance.

"He's holed up in his room, but he's on the phone with Dad," Lance texts back.

Mark can handle this--Mirana can call after work. But she'll still call, because Keith is her son and he just lost his best friend.

"I don't want to talk about it anymore," Keith says when she does, so she tells him about her day so he has something else to think about.

"I'm proud of you," she says at the end of the conversation. "And I love you."

His voice sounds tired and hollow when he whispers, "Thanks. I love you, too."

If only she could protect her boys from the worst of the world, and give them only the best.

In a week she's woken up by a phone call.

"Keith left," Lance tells them. "He just took all his stuff and left? He didn't even say goodbye! I saw him go on Shiro's hoverbike. Mom--Dad--I don't know where he went."

Mirana texts Keith: "Just tell me you're safe."

He texts back, three minutes later: "I'm safe."

"I know where he is," says Mark, after Mirana shows him the text but before Lance hangs up. "I'll go get him in the morning."

She doesn't sleep very well, anyway.

The Garrison doesn't call until almost noon, when Mark's still out at his shack--"Keith's here," he'd said over a brief call. Mirana finds she is not too keen to hear what Iverson has to say.

"We had no choice but to expel him," he tells her. "He was too disruptive. He has a history of violence. It was for the safety of our staff and students."

"And you waited a day to say so," she says. "I hope you were more prompt in informing the Holt and Shirogane families of the Kerberos failure."

"That isn't relevant, Mrs. Espinosa."

"Either you've never lost someone you loved, or you've never loved at all." She hangs up.

If Keith has given up on being a pilot because of this, that's fine. But he ought to be able to decide so for himself, when the grief has dulled.

Lance calls soon after, and the first thing he says when she picks up is, "Is Keith okay?"

"He's okay," she says. "Dad is with him."

Lance lets out a long sigh. "Okay, good." He laughs a little, but then he gets quiet.

"Lance?"

"I was just thinking," he says. "'Cause I always complained that he was better at me than everything. And I wanted to... not be in his shadow. But I didn't want it like  _ this _ ." 

"Lance, honey," Mirana says. "You already shine on your own."

He sighs. "That's not it! I just feel like it's... karmically my fault, or something. Be careful what you wish for, and all that."

"It isn't your fault," she reassures him. "Of course it's not your fault. There's nothing you could have done to cause this."

"I guess." He pauses. "I wish I could... go back and change things, somehow, though."

When he hangs up, she is left with a sense of unease that won't seem to fade. She doesn't want Lance talking about time travel when she knows it's possible; she doesn't want him following in his father's footsteps.

She doesn't want him to run from the present when things get hard, to take on a responsibility instead that doesn't belong to him.

Keith follows Mark home for dinner, but he doesn't even stay the night.

"D'you believe in fate?" Mark asks over a couple of beers and the old crackling radio, late in the evening.

"I don't want to," she responds. "But sometimes I worry about it."

"Yeah." He takes a drink. "Me too."

Time passes; Keith comes home for dinner now and then. They settle back into rhythm and Mirana only worries as much as usual.

Until the night something bright shoots by overhead, towards the desert, and she and Mark exchange a look and she knows that he knows too: it's no meteor. No matter what the radio says.

Lance calls in the morning.

"I'm with Keith," he tells them over the sound of wind. "Shiro came back last night."

"The crash," says Mirana. She finds Mark's hand and squeezes it.

"Yeah! Keith says we're gonna go find what he's been looking for. But there's something weird going on with the Garrison."

"Be careful," says Mark. "Keep your feet on the ground."

"We will! Love you, Dad! Mom!"

"Me too!" Keith shouts in the background, muffled.

"We love you," says Mirana, and the call disconnects. As one, without hesitation, they head for the car.

By the time they reach Mark's shack Lance and Keith are long gone, but there's a woman there with a pile of equipment. Holt, Mirana remembers; she knows that face from the papers, remembers those haunted eyes in particular. 

She remembers imagining what it must be like, to lose half your family at once--if she lost Mark and Lance, or Mark and Keith, or  _ Lance and Keith, _ all at once. She remembers being paralyzed by just the thought of it; of course she remembers that face.

She wonders if her own eyes are as haunted yet.

They meet at the porch but before anyone speaks there's noise and light, and they look up. Something is shooting up through the atmosphere, something horribly familiar--something she thought she'd never see again. Something she rather desperately didn't want to see right now, though she hadn't known it was even a possibility.

_ Ah, _ she thinks numbly, grabbing Mark's arm.  _ So it's my turn for the world to shatter. _

Alfor's words echo through her head, from a time long past in more ways than one. She can see him in her mind's eye, young and eager, spying on his future accomplishments--and Lance, an infant, reaching for the massive weapon they hide behind.

_ He seems to like Blue. _

The Blue Lion was here on Earth this whole time, just waiting for her son to find. His birthright. She needs to sit down.

"That ship," she explains shakily, leaning on Mark as she settles onto the nearest chair. "That lion... It--it belonged to Alfor."

Fate is a horrible thing, to drag children into the footsteps of their wayward parents.

"Does this look familiar, too?" asks Mrs. Holt. She holds something up, a phone with a dark and grainy photo onscreen; it means nothing to Mirana but Mark stiffens beside her.

"Yes," he says. His voice nearly cracks. "It looks just like Rai's."

The footsteps of their parents indeed. She hangs her head and wishes she could stop thinking for a while.

"Just who are you?" Mrs. Holt asks--demands, nearly. 

"Mark Kogane."

Mirana looks up to find those haunted eyes fixed on her. "Mirana Espinosa."

Mrs. Holt nods just slightly, as if they've told her something she already knew, and joins them on the porch. She holds her hand out to Mark.

"Nice to meet you, Mark, Mirana," she says. There's a determination in her voice that ignites a faint spark of hope in Mirana's heart, like maybe, just maybe, she knows what to do. "I'm Colleen Holt."

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr [here](http://maternalcube.tumblr.com/)
> 
> ps. im corunning [this matt zine](https://vldmattzine.tumblr.com/), check it out!


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